Language and Occupation Theories

Language and Occupation Theories

Eakins and Eakins 1976:

They found out that in seven university faculty meetings, men spoke for the longest. Their turn ranged from 10.66 to 17.07 seconds and the women’s were from 3 to 10 seconds.

Edelsky 1981:

Edelsky’s (1981) conducted his research in office floors and face to face. On the F1 floors (linear, hierarchical) there was mostly male participants and on the F2 (collaborative, democratic) floors there were an equal amount of male and women participants. On the F1 floor type, male pre-dominant discussions took place, however female-predominant discussions took place on a mixed floor type (F1, F2). A combined account of his findings that were based on the predictable mapping of gender and floor onto power relations is suggested and raised to explain singularities that appear inconsistent under a simple floor or gender based view. In conclusion, the implications of this account for the notion in the floor in CMC and for floor-based accounts of participation and response patterns in conversational interaction more generally.

Herbert and Straight 1989:

People from a higher status tend to have flowing comments than those people of a lower status.

Compliments tend to flow from those of higher rank to those of lower rank. They said that from a young age, children are taught to say thank you to a compliment, whereas adult speakers think that responding to compliments is embarrassing. They believe that when people are responding to a compliment they should choose their strategy carefully so they avoid appearing arrogant, rude or too eager to please. Regardless of the allegation that adults have been taught to say thank you, research shows that a huge amount of speakers do whatever they can to avoid accepting compliments. Gender is analysed as a variable in mainly all compliments, women give and receive many more compliments than men. This study is especially concerned with the responses used by women in all female compliment exchanges in an undergraduate level university setting and uses a cross-cultural comparison of German and Italian to highlight any similarities or differences in compliment response strategy preference and compliment function between the two cultures.

Herring 1992:

Herring constructed her investigation in an email discussion that took place on a linguistics distribution list, five women and 30 men took part even though women make up nearly half of the Linguistic Society of America. The men’s messages on average were twice as long as women’s. The women tended to use a personal voice, for example – “I am intrigued by your comment…” The men dominated the conversation and their tone was confident – “It is obvious that…”

Holmes 1998 onwards:

Holmes believes that women use compliments positively affective speech acts to build relationship. Its absence would be seen as impolite in situations where a compliment may be expected.

Holmes and Marra 2002 and Holmes 2005:

Women use just as much humour as men and they use it for the same functions – to control discourse and subordinates and to contest superiors even though they are more likely to encourage supportive and collaborative humour. They came to the conclusion that the use, type and style of humour reflect the unseen relations to the organizations.

Tracy and Eisenberg 1990/1991:

Men showed more concern for the feelings of the person they were criticizing when in the subordination course when role-playing delivering criticism to a co-worker about errors in a business letter. Women showed more concern when in the superior role.

Various theories 1998-2004:

Workers tend to use more indirect devices such as ‘we’ instead of you, hedged strictures and modals when giving an instruction to an equal. Workers are often more direct when giving directions to a subsidiary.

Occupational therapist theory (Melbourne, Australia):

There was a participatory action research study into the experience and use of occupation, theory and evidence in the everyday practice of a group of occupational therapists working in a large metropolitan hospital delivering a range of sensitive services, in Melbourne in Australia. The occupational therapists decided to change the language they used to describe their practice to a function focus to an occupation focus. The therapist’s confidence levels were improved from this change and their professional identities where strengthened and a sense of renewed empowerment within the organisation was provided. In conclusion, these findings suggest that in sensitive settings occupational therapists can develop their language more successfully to expand their ability to promote the vital and unique contribution that occupational therapy has to make. These small, powerful changes can allow occupational therapist to address long standing dilemmas of representation and allow life forming practices. 

Race and Ethnicity Theories

Major Sociological Theories of Race and Ethnicity

There are several sociological theories about why prejudice, discrimination, and racism exist. Current sociological theories focus mainly on explaining the existence of racism, particular institutional racism. The three major sociological perspectives each have their own explanations to the existence of racism.

Functionalist theorists 

These theorists argue that in order for race and ethnic relations to be functional and contribute to the pleasant behaviour and stability of society, racial and ethnic minorities must understand into that society. Incorporation is a process in which a minority becomes engaged into the main society – socially, economically, and culturally.

Symbolic interaction

Symbolic interaction theorists look at two issues in relation to race and ethnicity. First, they look at the role of social interaction and how it reduces racial and ethnic hostility. Second, they look at how race and ethnicity are socially constructed. Symbolic interactionists ask the question, “What happens when two people of different race or ethnicity come in contact with one another and how such interracial can or interethnic contact reduce hostility and conflict?”

Conflict

The basic argument made by conflict theorists is that class-based conflict is a characteristic and original part of society. These theorists also argue that racial and ethnic conflict is tied to class conflict and that in order to reduce racial and ethnic conflict, class conflict must first be reduced.

Questionnaire Analysis

Questionnaire Analysis

All of my respondents are White British apart from one who is Welsh. This implies that the Welsh respondent’s attitude is different because they believe that they are not part of Britain even though Wales is part of Britain. This suggests that all of my respondents apart from one are of the same ethnicity.

From my results, there were more male respondents than females. The majority of my respondents are in the age group between 31-40 (8 people) with four people in the 41-50 age range, two people in the 20-30 age range and the 51+. This shows that my respondents are of a similar age group. 

All of my respondents have the roughly the same opinion on what the word ethnicity meant as they thought it was to do with culture or origins. This same view on the word could have been influenced by upbringing or education.

The overall opinion of my respondents was that they think the use of Standard English has decreased, this could suggest that people in society are not using the correct Standard English, as they are using abbreviation of words or even using slang words. Some examples of the people who said yes, expressed their view by saying “Yes due to the culture of technology and social networking”, “Yes – the evolution of language. Trends impact on language so words are adapted” and another view was “Yes because lots of diversity has caused the language to evolve.” Of the people that said no, there responses were “No I think it has developed/changed and “No; it is a universal language but clearly each year new words linked to common culture become added to the term Standard English.” This is common with teenagers as they are picking up all these different words and using slang and abbreviation of words. One answer refers to The Only Way Is Essex, this suggests that some TV programs have influenced the way in which people talk.

The overall view on the question 5 that says “Please read these two sentences and express your opinion of these sentences and which social class you think they belong to?” Most of the respondents said that the sentence “Why ain’t you gonna come out tomorrow?” was someone of a low/working class and the other sentence “My Lord, what time will we be attending the ball tonight?”was someone from an upper class. This implies that they all have the same attitude and they can decide what social class that people belong to just by the way they speak and what their dialect and accent is.

Out of all the respondents, one person knew someone of an Afro-Caribbean origin and said that they think their dialect wasn’t different to British peoples.

There was a mixture of opinions on question 6 which read “do you think that the language used by Black British people is standard or not?” This means that all my respondents have a different view about Black British peoples standard English, this could be because they were brought up to know that they speak standard English are that where they live there is a variety of different cultures. One example was that “Yes, everyone has their own ‘version’ or ‘style’ and “I was at university with some incredible well spoken black British people. I don’t think colour can be an indication of how well someone speaks or an assumption that they don’t speak correctly. This person has a very strong opinion. Other examples are “dependent on individuals not ethnicity” and two people said no.

My results have shown that Standard English has not completely been forgotten about and it is being more widely accepted within different cultural/regional varieties. Standard English is also taught in school - written and spoken.